This invention relates generally to knife sharpeners, and more particularly to a knife sharpener for sharpening a circular knife of a food slicing machine.
Powered food slicing machines are designed to slice cheeses, vegetables, and hot and cold meats quickly. The machines are commonly found in grocery stores and restaurants, where large amounts of food are prepared. The typical food slicing machine includes a circular knife rotated by an electric motor. The knife has a beveled edge portion and an opposing planar edge portion. An adjustable baseplate mounted parallel to the plane of the circular knife is movable toward and away from the knife plane to adjust the thickness of the slice. A carriage tray that holds the food to be sliced is then moved back and forth along the baseplate to enable the knife edge to slice into the food. As the knife edge engages meat, for example, the beveled portion acts to separate the slice from the rest of the meat. These food slicing machines are available from a number of manufacturers, including Hobart Corporation of Troy, Ohio; and Globe Slicing Machine Co., Inc. of Stamford, Conn.
Because of the amount of food sliced by these machines, the knife edge becomes dulled quickly and must therefore be regularly sharpened to maintain cutting efficiency. Conventional apparatus for sharpening the knife edge includes a pair of opposing powered grinding wheels that can be positioned to straddle the knife edge and grind the opposing edge portions until the edge is sharp. These sharpening apparatus, however, tend to grind the knife edge down quickly and thus shorten the life of the knife. Moreover, use of these apparatus requires considerable skill to avoid damaging the knife edge.
Prior knife sharpeners that rely on stationary sharpening elements are not suitable for grinding the circular knife of a food slicing machine. U.S. Pat. No. 1,098,672 to Lynch, for example, discloses a knife sharpener that has an abrasive surface for sharpening only the planar edge portion of the knife. But no means are disclosed for properly mounting the sharpener to sharpen the edge of a circular knife within a slicing machine.
The present invention does not have these disadvantages. It can be aligned easily with the knife edge, is inexpensive, and does not excessively grind the knife edge in sharpening it.